Write the headline last, in nine words or fewer

The headline is the most read sentence you will ever write and often the last one you should write. A title drafted before the story exists is a guess. You are naming a thing you have not yet built. By the time the piece is finished, it is usually about something slightly different from what you imagined, and the headline you wrote first no longer fits.

Write the story, then write the headline. Once the piece exists you know what it is actually about, which fact is the strongest, and which angle earns the reader. Only then can you compress that knowledge into a title that is both accurate and inviting. The order matters. Reporting first, headline last, is not a preference, it is a method.

Keep it to nine words or fewer. This is not an arbitrary rule, it is a response to where people read. Feeds, search results, notifications, and phone screens all truncate. A headline that runs long gets cut off at the worst possible moment, and the reader sees a fragment that promises nothing. Nine words fits almost everywhere without being clipped.

A good headline makes a promise the story keeps. If the title says a decision was made, the story must show the decision. If it hints at a scandal, the story must deliver the substance. The fastest way to lose a reader for good is to over promise in the headline and under deliver in the text. They feel it immediately, and they blame you, not the story.

Lead with the strongest concrete noun and the strongest verb. Headlines built on abstractions feel like fog. Headlines built on specific things and specific actions feel like news. Compare "Changes ahead for local transport" with "City closes eastern rail line for six weeks." The second one tells the reader something. The first one tells them nothing while pretending to.

Numbers earn attention when they are real and relevant. A specific figure signals that the story contains substance, not just opinion. But a number in a headline has to be honest. If the figure is an estimate, do not dress it up as a certainty. Readers who feel manipulated by a headline number remember it, and the trust is expensive to rebuild.

Avoid the two failure modes at the edges. On one side is the dull, accurate label that no one clicks, a headline so cautious it says almost nothing. On the other is the inflated tease that betrays the story. The target sits between them: a title that is completely true and still makes a person want to know more. Aim for the middle every time.

Cut every word that is not doing work. Articles, filler verbs, and throat clearing all steal space you do not have. "In a move that is being seen as significant" can almost always become one strong verb. Read your headline and challenge each word to justify its place. If a word can leave without changing the meaning, it should leave.

Front load the words that matter. Because feeds and search truncate from the right, the most important words belong on the left. If the key fact is at the end of the headline, it is the part most likely to be cut. Put the news where the reader will always see it, at the very start.

Write several headlines, not one. The first title you think of is rarely the best, it is just the most obvious. Draft five or six, deliberately different from each other, and the strongest one usually reveals itself by contrast. This takes a few extra minutes and improves the single most important line in the piece, which is the best trade you can make.

Read the headline out loud, on its own, with none of the story around it. That is exactly how most people will meet it, alone in a feed with no context. If it makes sense and lands cleanly by itself, it works. If it only makes sense once you already know the story, it is not finished.

Match the headline to the register of the piece. A careful investigation deserves a headline that sounds careful. A light culture story can carry a lighter title. A mismatch, a sober story under a breathless headline, or a fun story under a grim one, jars the reader before they have read a word, and it undermines everything that follows.

The headline is where the largest number of people will judge your work, most of them without reading further. Treat it as the finished expression of the story rather than a label slapped on top. Written last, kept short, and made to keep its promise, the headline stops being decoration and becomes the sharpest tool you have for reaching a reader.